Andover House

Choose another place to live! There are plenty of options. We read reviews like this and ignored them, don’t be us. It’s a good location, the units and building will seem nice, the front desk people are great but the bad outweighs the good.

There is never anyone in the leasing office to help you with anything. (Wonder why you’re doing a self guided tour) That would be fine with me in most buildings but something will break down in your unit here at least once a month maybe more, they must... install appliances used and the water pipes in the building are falling apart, our hvac broke 3 times before it was actually fixed.
We got the dreaded big water leak that seems to happen to everyone here and could not sleep in our unit for close to a week. The leasing office will never do anything for you, you are basically on your own to coordinate with the maintenance staff to get things fixed. They also require insurance because if anything happens to your unit you will be dealing with them to get any accommodations paid for. Your unit is unlivable for any reason? Sorry you’re still paying that rent! Like I said they are useless. The rent and extra fees here are not worth it for the service you get. I will never rent a building under UDR management again. I have dealt with a handful of other management teams and UDR is by far the worst. Read More

good location but overpriced. Doing non-necessary upgrades which increases the rent (such as parcel pending, smart lock, fancy elevator..etc). The leasing office personel is not friendly when we need help.

I absolutely love living at Andover House! I’ve lived in the D.C. area for four years, and Andover House is by far the best apartment community I’ve lived. The leasing and concierge staff are extremely helpful and friendly. They are always so accessible and make an effort to get to know you and hear about your living experiences.

Highly recommend Andover House as a place to live. Check it out!

Be aware! a month before the end of my lease I was asked to show my apartment which is occupied, to prospects. I received a call early Saturday morning, without prior notice, to tell me that they wanted to show my apartment. I refused, I had just woke up. My experience with any other buildings in DC is that no one would show your apartment when you are still in it. The leasing agent will tell you that it is part of the Handover House lease.

The final blow was an inspection/visit of my apartment... 10 days before my move. While I would have been fine with it. I only was made aware of the inspection, because someone left a paper on my kitchen counter. No mail or call... they just came in without any authorization.

Overall the building is old, the amenities are limited. You cannot use the small rooftop terrace in Summer because it is full of cockroaches. heating and cooling are difficult to set at the right temperature as it is an old thermostat. The leasing office responsiveness, once you decided to leave, is close to zero.

Last but not least, you can find the Handover House on Expedia for short term stays, so don't be surprise if the lobby looks more like an hotel at time.

You can get way better for your money... Read More

Think twice before signing a lease here. There are a lot of great options around 14th street which are much better.

There are a lot of things that don't work in this building.

1. Maintenance issues: be ready to get things fixed three or four times before you can actually say that it was fixed.

2. A large number of new faces circulated in the leasing and management office. None of them took responsibility for the decisions of their predecessors. For example, one person at some point had the... idea to build a room for bicycles and then the next person who came claimed that it was too expensive to build. Some bikes were stolen so they installed new racks but most of the reasonable buildings on 14th street have a secured area with fob access for bikes. This is not very expensive to make (don't be fooled). There are cameras in the garage and nobody even tried to get more information about the stolen bikes.

3. There were reports of cars which were broken into the garage. The garage door is broken more often than not and on those occasions anyone can enter. There isn't really a concierge 24 hours.

4. One time I found (a really nice Tiffany) neckless in the floor and immediately gave it to the concierge. They never sent an email asking for the owner. When we asked if they found the owner they seemed not to understand what we were talking about. They said that the owner never showed up to ask for a missing item.

5. When you move out they will try to rip you off. I lived in a luxurious building for real before moving to Andover house and things worked out very differently. The funny part is that when I moved in at Andover house there were even nails on the walls (painted on top). They will rip you off at the move out but don't expect to find the apartment in amazing conditions when you move in.

6. They made some improvements over the years but given the number of new buildings around 14th street, the quality of the apartments doesn't compare.

7. They showed our unit while we still had some stuff inside. They gave us less than a 24 hour notice but we still agreed with the showing of the unit. We asked them to be conscious that we couldn't be there but we had stuff inside. To our complete surprise after showing the unit they left ALL LIGHTS ON, the air conditioner ON and the door UNLOCKED. We went to the unit 3 days after to collect the stuff we left and found this unacceptable surprise! I don't recommend you to let them show your unit if you are not there. Read More